Answer.co.uk Review 2023

So, Answer.co.uk, you want to know if it’s any good as a virtual receptionist or phone answering service for your business?

In short, I use it for my own digital marketing business. It’s cheap, effective, and does the job that I need it to do.

For freelancers, soletraders, and small businesses that need a phone answering service and a really basic virtual receptionist answer.co.uk is a great choice.

Below is my full Answer.co.uk review, but before you read that, you might as well sign up for free, and get £5 free credit!

Get £5 credit right now for free when you sign up.

Answer.co.uk Review 2023

If you’re a small business with a handful of employees or a solo freelancer then answering your phones whenever they ring can be a nightmare for getting any work done. I know this to be true, as when whenever the phone rings and it’s a potential new customer or a new sale, it can throw out your entire day of work.

Out of hours calls can be hard to manage and it’s expensive to hire a dedicate person to answer calls out of hours. But leaving those calls to go straight to answerphone is not a great impression and you’ll lose business and sales that way.

Then there is the filtering benefit. Filtering out nonsense cold-calling is the worst! We all know that to be true. It’s the standard procedure of ‘yes, no, no thank you, no…no thanks, bye’ which can also ruin your productivity.

Lastly, there is the fact that speaking on the phone, for those that are not confident on the phone, can feel like the world is ending. This is probably more true for the younger generations that are not as confident speaking on the phone. I know that I personally am not fan of answering a phone cold without knowing who I’m talking to or roughly what they want beforehand.

A good fix for these is to use a virtual receptionist service or phone answering service like answer.co.uk.

How does Answer.co.uk work?

Once you’re signed up you get access to your Answer.co.uk dashboard. On here you can top-up your account, edit how the receptionist answers your calls, and you can manage any calls that have been logged. They also supply you with a diverting number so that you can divert your incoming calls to Answer.co.uk’s receptionists.

You can see all of the calls logged by the receptionist from the inbox, each of these you can click through and see the full details. If there are any sales calls you can mark them as such and get the cost refunded. If there are any nuisance calls, you can blacklist and block them too.

What details can I collect on Answer.co.uk?

As standard you can collect the callers name, phone number, and message. I contacted Answer and asked them to add the ability to capture an email address – they did so and it costs me a small amount extra per call which I was more than happy to do.

Below is the screen that Answer.co.uk’s receptionist sees for my business.

Answer.co.uk pricing

Answer.co.uk is Pay As You Go (PAYG) and there are no ongoing monthly charges. This is the main reason I use Answer.co.uk rather than any of the alternatives. I personally don’t like to add another ongoing monthly commitment to my books and a PAYG system works just about right for my business needs.

Pricing starts from 90p per call up to £1.20 per call.

Which isn’t bad at all right. Basically it’ll cost you a quid to get a phone answered, get a message taken, and for the potential customer to speak to a real human being rather than being left to go to voicemail. Or worse, you answering and interrupting your work.

You’ve got to top up £25 a time but the credit doesn’t expire so only pay when you get a call.

Sales Calls, Cold-calls and Blacklisting

It’s straightforward and simple to mark calls as unwanted sales, junk or nuisance calls. You can also block and blacklist those numbers too. I currently have a list of 80+ blacklisted calls which means that 80+ nuisance calls haven’t disturbed my day to day working.

How do I get started on Answer.co.uk?

It’s a pretty quick process and there are essentially just 4 steps:

1) Setting up your account – It takes just a few minutes to create your account and get everything set up.

2) Diverting your phone – You’ll get an 0208 number which you need to divert your phone number across to.

3) Answering the calls – The operators will answer the calls, based on your call answering instructions

4) Message is sent to you – You’ll get an email and/or a SMS text containing the info from the call.

It’s that straight forward.

TL;DR

Answer.co.uk is perfect for freelancers and small businesses that want a cost effective way to answer calls day and night without interrupting their daily work schedule. Ideal for filtering sales calls and blocking nuisance callers.

I recommend Answer.co.uk and use it as my first line of contact for all sales enquiries coming in to my business. This gives me the freedom to get on with the work I need to do then when I am ready to get back to customers about their enquiry. It’s also a great way to vet and filter leads before they get to you.

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